DuckDuckGo shows code examples

Because of Google’s new privacy warning, I finally changed my default search engine to DuckDuckGo.[1] So far, I’m quite happy with it. I was especially pleased when I noticed they sometimes show code snippets or excerpts from documentation on the results page.

Apparently, DDG has decided that it wants to be «the best search engine for programmers». One feature they’re using are the instant answers that are sometimes shown in addition to the ‘normal’ search results. These instant answers may get their contents from DDGs own databases - examples include cheat sheets created for the purpose - or they may use external APIs, such as the Stack Overflow API. Currently, volunteers are working to improve search results for the top 15 programming languages, including Javascript, Python and R.

One could argue that instant answers promote the wrong kind of laziness - copying code from the search results page rather than visit the original post on Stack Overflow. But for quickly looking up trivialstuff, I think this is perfect.

I assume the contents of the privacy warning could have been reason to switch search engines, but what triggered me was the intrusive warning that Google shows in each new browsers session - basically punishing you for having your browser throw away cookies. ↩